The river split ahead.
One path was a wide, gentle main channel, while the other was a narrow torrent leading between two mountains.
Long Jiu didn’t hesitate to steer the boat into the narrow path.
The navigator’s voice boomed in the air: “Entering the mountain gorge ahead, please drive carefu—”
Then, like a rooster being choked, its voice stopped abruptly.
Long Jiu knelt at the bow, holding the wooden paddle with both hands, staring closely at the waterway ahead.
Without turning her head, she dropped two words: “Trust me.”
Before Frey could react, the dugout canoe had already slipped into the fissure.
The mouth of the canyon was extremely narrow.
The cliff walls on both sides were like two black blades thrusting from the earth, piercing straight into the clouds.
The two cliffs were barely thirty feet apart, and a near-suffocating sense of pressure squeezed in from all directions.
The river’s surface was as flat as a mirror, but the flow was extremely fast, silently pulling the lonely vessel into the darkness.
Too quiet.
This was a pathological silence.
The water was clearly rushing at a terrifying speed, yet not a single sound of waves slapping against the stone walls could be heard.
Even the ripple of the paddle stirring the water had vanished.
Frey shifted his body uneasily.
He looked up.
Hermione was turning back to look at him, her lips moving rapidly, a look of panic on her face as if she were calling his name, but all that reached Frey’s ears was a deathly silence.
Had he lost his hearing?
No, this space had swallowed all sound.
The canoe snaked through the winding, twisting canyon.
The foliage of the trees on both banks intertwined nearly two hundred feet above, forming a canopy that completely blocked out the last remnants of the twilight.
It was as if they were traveling through a pitch-black tunnel where they couldn’t see their own hands.
Frey instinctively raised his wand, wanting to cast a Lumos.
But a withered, weak hand firmly pressed down on his wrist.
It was Newt.
The old man slowly shook his head and handed over a Muggle flashlight.
*Click.*
A weak beam of light shone from the bow.
Hermione was the first to turn on her flashlight.
The beam flickered slightly, but it was usable.
This kind of light source, devoid of magic fluctuations, was currently the safest option.
The canoe rounded a sharp bend.
The river’s speed suddenly spiked, and inertia sent the boat hurtling toward the stone wall on the right.
Hermione’s head was about to slam into the rock.
His body reacted faster than his brain.
He lunged forward and braced his right hand against the dark stone wall.
However, the expected texture of rock never came.
The instant his palm touched the wall, cold sweat drenched Frey’s back.
What he felt was a sickening sensation: slimy, wet, and warm, as if he were pushing against not a mountain, but the writhing internal organs of some colossal beast.
Countless tiny, furry sensations frantically rubbed between his fingers.
The flashlight swept over.
Frey sucked in a sharp breath, his scalp tingling.
The entire stone wall was densely covered with countless overlapping, grayish-black creatures.
They looked like shriveled leather pouches packed together, occasionally revealing pairs of tiny, dark-red eyes that reflected a greedy, feral gleam under the flashlight.
His single push had actually plowed a visible indentation into that warm pile of fur.
The current pulled the boat away, and the canoe scraped along the wall of flesh as it continued to drift forward.
Newt handed Frey a note.
By the flashlight’s glow, Frey read the words:
“Bats. Don’t use your wand.”
Frey looked around.
With the help of the flashlight, he realized that on the cliffs in all directions and on the stalactites hanging from the ceiling, there nested not hundreds, but tens of thousands of these things.
If he had cast that spell just now, this number of mutated bats would have been enough to tear the four of them to bare bones in seconds.
He had always considered himself the master of his own fate, but in the face of this suffocating silence and endless darkness, he felt a sense of powerless humility for the first time in his life.
Just then, he noticed something wrong with Hermione.
The girl sat stiffly and rigidly, her flashlight trembling slightly as she aimed it forward.
On the right side of her neck, a tiny creature was actually clinging to her.
The creature’s translucent wings were pressed tightly against Hermione’s long, pale neck.
A long, thin, transparent tube-like organ was buried deep inside her skin.
Frey could even clearly see bright red blood rhythmically flowing up the proboscis and into its abdomen.
Hermione was completely unaware, still intently observing the path ahead.
Newt handed over another note: “Catch it, use the net.”
Frey held his breath.
Moving gently, he pulled a specially made insect net from the side pocket of his backpack.
Utilizing the slight rocking of the canoe as it scraped against the stone wall, he suddenly reached out and trapped the feasting monster.
It was easier than expected.
The creature, sluggish from consuming too much blood, only began to squirm and struggle after Frey scooped it into the net.
Only then did Hermione notice something was wrong.
She whipped her head around and glared at Frey, her eyes seemingly accusing him of playing tricks at a time like this.
However, when she raised her hand to touch the spot on her neck where the net had grazed, warm, sticky liquid covered her fingertips.
The flashlight illuminated her hand, showing it covered in fresh blood.
Hermione’s face drained of color instantly, and her body swayed.
In her moment of panic, a pair of hands steadily caught her.
Long Jiu turned around from the bow, pulled Hermione into her arms, deftly unscrewed a bottle of fresh water, and gently washed the wound for her.
Then, she pressed a white cloth against Hermione’s neck and gestured “it’s okay” to the girl.
The bleeding quickly stopped.
Still shaken, Hermione leaned into Long Jiu’s embrace, her strength completely spent.
The canoe was carried by the current around another nearly ninety-degree bend.
In the darkness ahead, a tiny white crack suddenly split open.
Immediately afterward, the crack expanded with unstoppable momentum.
“Close your eyes!” Newt’s voice miraculously reached Frey’s ears.
The dark top of the gorge burst open.
The moment the canoe shot out of the canyon, the outside world was so bright it was blinding.
The feeling of rebirth came not only from their vision but also from the fresh, mist-laden air rushing over them.
The sounds that had been suppressed for miles exploded like a heavy bomb in their ears.
The roar of water, the howl of the wind, the screaming of the navigator… all sounds reclaimed their domain in an instant, leaving Frey’s mind blank.
The navigator’s hysterical voice came back online: “Waterfall ahead! Hold on to your souls!”
Frey only had time to let out a curse.
A massive sensation of weightlessness swept over them.
Amidst the spraying white foam and rainbows, they fell, boat and all, into a wide, emerald-green lake.
*Splash!*
Frey broke through the water, wiped the droplets from his face, and looked around.
The scenery of the lake was unrealistically beautiful.
It was surrounded by emerald-green mountains like folding screens, and about twenty Fwoopers flew lazily overhead in a V-shape.
Long Jiu was currently standing on a reef by the shore, wringing out her soaking wet white T-shirt.
Frey did his best to look away from the well-defined silhouette on the shore, telling himself his racing heart was only due to the weightlessness from earlier.
Leaning against a rock, Newt held the netted creature high against the sunlight, observing it closely.
Holding the white cloth to her neck, Hermione sat by the shore.
She pointed to the upturned canoe in the middle of the lake and shouted to Frey, “Could you please bring that up?”
Frey swam to the canoe and flipped it over with a heave.
Accompanied by a series of dry heaves, the navigator finally spat out a string of slurred curses.
Long Jiu looked at Frey apologetically.
“I’m sorry. I only have two hands and could only grab the old gentleman and Hermione. But don’t worry, I’ve been here once before. It’s a great place to camp. We can get a good night’s sleep here tonight.”
A good night’s sleep?
Frey felt that after such a tumultuous day, he truly needed one.